for him, but his experience was a common one, used at the time to build social contacts and bolster career advancement. As a citizen of Ottawa during the period from 1882 until his death in October 1942, he experienced the nation's capital during its transformation from a rough lumber town notorious for its taverns and drunken brawls to a large city, a political, social and cultural centre of Canada, with sedate civil servants carrying briefcases replacing the rowdy lumbermen. During his time he saw the introduction of sewers, telephones, electricity and automobiles. He and his wife, Isabella, the daughter of an influential alderman of Ottawa, C.R. Cunningham, had three children. But Low lost both sons and his wife long before he died. Only his eldest child, a daughter named Estelle who never married, outlived him.
As a lifetime employee in the Geological Survey, he was part of the federal government, and his career is a window beckoning us to look into its workings during that era. A trained scientist in the premier government scientific institution of its day, his career was one of slow progression in an institution that was often starved of funds. Like some of his colleagues, he complained about the low pay scales and finally left for better pay in the private sector. Unlike many of these colleagues, he, however, soon returned to the Geological Survey. In 1906, he was appointed director of the Geological Survey “over the heads” of some geologists who bitterly resented that he had fewer years of service than themselves. The following year, he was appointed deputy minister of the newly formed Department of Mines, but was struck with a debilitating disease that eventually ended his career. His illness was officially described as cerebral meningitis, but whispered to be syphilis by his enemies, even though there is no evidence for this. Low went on medical leave a few months after becoming deputy minister, and never returned to work again.
So why haven't we heard more of him? While he lived to 81, he left little of the story of his life behind. At least, we did not find any treasure troves of private papers and diaries left in some long-forgotten trunk in a dusty attic. Not one personal letter turned up anywhere. What did his friends call him — Bert? Pete? One of the few living relatives that we found, Mrs. Wynn Turner of Perth, Ontario, great-grand-niece of Albert Peter Low, told us that oral family history has always referred to him as “A.P.”
In contrast, several of his colleagues in the Geological Survey — such as Joseph Tyrrell and Robert Bell — left behind large volumes of letters, diaries and clippings which are accessible and which provide extensive insights into their professional and personal lives. Perhaps the illness that caused Low's retirement also deprived him of a productive period when many write their memoirs or organize their materials. Perhaps this dearth of memorabilia is due to a lack of surviving family members in a position to ensure that his materials were not lost. As noted, Low's two sons and wife died before he did. Only his spinster daughter survived him and little is known of her or what she may have done with any of her father's personal papers. The only known trove of Low's handwritten material is his survey notebooks housed in the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Perhaps this dearth is due to Low's reticence to put himself in the public spotlight. He was a modest man. In contrast, and in the same decades, Joseph Tyrrell captured the public imagination with his trips across the central Barren Lands. His brother's report on the first expedition, “Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada” has become a well-known book for Arctic collectors. Tyrrell also had the luck to find dinosaur bones in southern Alberta, a discovery that ultimately led to a museum being named after him. Low, on the other hand, only wrote exceptionally detailed and accurate geological reports, which do not make vibrant reading — unless you are a wilderness paddler. His book, The Cruise of the Neptune, is a good read for those who are interested in the era and locale, but is long out of print. Lastly, Low's tenure in the office of director of the Geological Survey was short, and his tenure as deputy minister of Mines was marred straightaway by his debilitating illness, so that he had little time to make his mark as a senior bureaucrat.
In Low's time there were still vast unknown areas of Canada yet to be explored — a time when no one knew what riches were hidden just beyond the next bend in the river, or over the next hill; a time when basic knowledge of geography, vegetation, wildlife and the indigenous peoples who lived in these shadowy unknown lands could be revealed and brought into the knowledge and consciousness of the Canadian society, largely clustered to the south, close to the border with the United States. Canada then was a young and emerging nation, defining its dreams and visions of the future. When the first Canadian National Park, Banff, was established in the Rocky Mountains in 1885, Low was exploring vast Lake Mistassini in rugged country east of James Bay. The next year, the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed while Low was in wild country west of James Bay. The Northwest Rebellion, the Klondike Gold Rush, the death of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, the election of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal Party in 1896, all occurred in his time.
For those whose passion is history, it is well known that historical research can be both exhilarating and exhausting. Jim is determined to make known the exploits of this remarkable, yet largely unknown, Canadian explorer. Jim is also addicted to dark green, the colour of spruce. I too have a serious addiction — to watching landscape pass before my eyes at the speed of a canoe. So we put our addictions together and hatched a plan to retrace some of A.P. Low's exceptional canoe explorations. How better to come to know someone than to follow in his footsteps, to sweat over the same portages and to be bitten by direct descendents of the same blackflies and mosquitoes that bit him. Thus was born the A.P. Low Expedition 2002.
GETTING READY
This expedition begins in the depths of the Library and Archives Canada, where we find a wealth of Low's photographs and government reports. We strike gold; here are Low's original maps and his handwritten field notebooks. But sniffing out old documents only reveals what happened to him and what he did. There is still much missing. To really understand the character of A.P. Low, we need to follow in at least some of his actual footsteps. As canoeists in need of a good excuse for a trip, we decide to follow some of Low's canoe routes, to retrace the portages that he used, and face the same navigation challenges that he overcame. But we want to do more than simply retrace his canoe routes. We want to find a way into his mind and heart, and maybe even touch his soul. Only by doing so can we truly achieve an appreciation of the magnitude of his extraordinary accomplishments, his determination and his resourcefulness.
One evening in the darkness of January 2002, Jim came over to my home, to find me sitting cross-legged on the floor of the dining room, which at the time was covered with 1:250,000 scale topographic maps.
“Jim,” I said, bewildered by the array of information, “we'll never find our way through this country. It's a maze, and everything looks just the same.” By then I had been reading A.P. Low's reports to the Geological Survey and trying to transcribe the route he took onto modern maps. “Admit it, Jim. We're hopelessly lost and we're not even out of the house yet.”
However, with perseverance and help from the original maps drawn by Low and his assistants, we put together a route that combines several of his explorations. From the village of Mistissini14 on the lake bearing almost the same name, about 400 kilometres north of Quebec City, we will fly by floatplane to Lake Naococane, near the Quebec border with Labrador. We choose this as a starting point because the lake appears on the maps as a most amazing body of water, with thousands of islands, peninsulas and elongated bays. Here, even the redoubtable Low became lost in this maze of land and water while on his 1895 expedition,15 and turned back from his attempt to reach the then-operational Hudson's Bay Company post at Lake Nichicun. With the help of modern maps and our Global Positioning System (GPS), we hope to complete what we call “Low's Gap” and paddle to Lake Nichicun. From there, our plan is to work our way up the Nichicun River (a tributary of the La Grande River) and over the height of land to the Eastmain River. We will descend the Eastmain to another abandoned HBC post, Neoskweskau, and then travel through a maze of lakes and creeks, both upstream and downstream, along a once well-travelled route to Lake Mistassini. From there, we will follow the traditional trade route of the Hudson's Bay Company brigades from Lake Mistassini, descend the Natastan branch of the Rupert River, the Marten River, and finally the Rupert itself, to end at Waskaganish
